Disney has released the official full trailer for its upcoming animated film, Raya and the Last Dragon , with Kelly Marie Tran and Awkwafina voicing the titular characters. It has the distinction of being the first Disney animated feature to be remotely developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, working with home equipment and mostly communicating via Zoom. The pandemic also caused the film's release date to be shifted multiple times. It's now slated for a March 5 release, both in theaters and on Disney+ with premier access.

Disney first announced the film during its 2019 D23 Expo and presented co-directors Don Hall ( Big Hero 6 , Moana ) and Carlos Lopez Estrada ( Frozen II , Blindspotting ) at D23 the following year. The fictional fantasy land of Kumandra was inspired by several different Southeast Asian cultures—Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Laos, and the Philippines—and the production team traveled extensively to most of those countries to research the film. A Lao visual anthropologist also reviewed the final designs.

Per the official synopsis:

Apple TV+ has dropped the trailer for the second season of For All Mankind , its science fiction drama about an alternate history where the space race never ended. The series was the linchpin of the Apple TV+ launch in 2019, and proved popular enough with viewers to warrant a second season.

(Some spoilers for the first season below.)

Series creator Ronald D. Moore ( Battlestar Galactica ) has made a point of trying to keep the show reasonably close to reality, despite the science fiction concept, often consulting the original NASA plans for guidance, and incorporating archival footage throughout the season. Moore said the following during a 2019 panel Q&A after an IMAX screening of the first two S1 episodes at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC:

A drone pilot is sent into a deadly militarized zone where he finds himself working for an android officer tasked with averting a doomsday scenario in Outside the Wire , the latest high-profile feature film from Netflix. This one stars Anthony Mackie as the android protagonist, fresh off his stunning performance in the sci-fi indie film Synchronic (included in our roundup last month of the best films released in 2020). That, and Netflix's solid track record with its feature films, are reason enough to be intrigued.

Per the official synopsis:

In 2036, America serves as a peacekeeping force and human troops on both sides are supported by robot combatants called Gumps and drone pilots monitoring skirmishes from thousands of miles away. But after headstrong drone pilot Lieutenant Harp (Damson Idris) disobeys a direct order to intervene in a conflict, the Army deploys him to a military outpost to confront the human costs of his button-pushing.

Harp's expectations of guarding a fence are upended when his new commanding officer Captain Leo (Anthony Mackie) announces plans to infiltrate the demilitarized zone and apprehend Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbæk), a warlord who intends to launch a network of dormant nuclear weapons. Soon, Harp learns that his theoretical experience as a drone pilot means little out on the battlefield under enemy attack—especially after discovering that Leo is an A.I.-enhanced supersoldier whose strength, speed and demand for results promise to turn his real-world education into a trial by fire.

That pretty much sums it up. The trailer opens with Harp showing up for his reassignment, apparently because he has trouble following the rules—or, as Leo (the classified prototype supersoldier) prefers to think of it, an ability to "think outside the box." A bit of a buddy-cop vibe separates the two, with Leo teasing his subordinate about the mushy inscription on the back of Harp's girlfriend's photo ("Awwww... 'my gummi bear....'"). We learn that Leo is capable of human emotion despite his extensive combat training (or, er, programming), and has a neat trick of temporarily removing his tracker when he wants to go off the grid ("Sometimes you got to get dirty to see any real change"). Then the fisticuffs, property damage, and explosions kick in.

Enlarge / Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy unveiled a slew of forthcoming Star Wars projects at Disney's Investor Day. (credit: Lucasfilm )

Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy gave updates on a slew of forthcoming Star Wars film and TV projects at Disney's Investor Day—including a behind-the-scenes teaser for Rogue One -spinoff series Andor, set five years before the events of the 2016 blockbuster film.

"With The Mandalorian on Disney+, we've ushered in an entirely new era for Star Wars ," Kennedy said. "These interconnected shows, along with future stories, will excite new audiences, embrace our most passionate fans, and will culminate in a climactic story event."

(Some spoilers below.)

Chloë Grace Moretz ( Kickass ) plays a female WWII pilot on a secret mission who must contend with an evil gremlin attempting to dismantle her B-17 in mid-air in Shadow in the Cloud , a horror/action film that debuted at the Toronto International's Film Festival in September, and is now coming to VOD on New Year's Day.  Based on the trailer, it looks like a mashup of Gremlins meets Snakes on a Plane , with some over-the-top Vin Diesel-style action tossed in for good measure.

Set in 1943, the film had a somewhat rocky road on the way to completion. Max Landis —creator of the BBC's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency , based on the Douglas Adams novels, and son of Director John Landis—penned the original draft script, and relative newcomer Roseanne Liang was hired to direct. Then Landis was accused of sexual and emotional abuse by eight women and dropped from the project. (In a since-deleted tweet , Director Josh Trank, who worked with Landis on the 2012 low budget superhero movie, Chronicle , said he believed the accusations and had even banned Landis from the set during Chronicle 's principal photography.)

Liang overhauled the script herself, punching up the female empowerment angle while still maintaining the horror/action thriller sensibility. The film premiered at a Toronto drive-in, and proved hugely popular with festival attendees, even winning the People's Choice Award for Midnight Madness. (It already holds a 74 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) All that buzz led to a distribution deal with Vertical Entertainment and Redbox Entertainment, purportedly worth about $5 million—apparently the first "drive-in theater movie" to be so acquired, per Deadline Hollywood .

It's been 15 years since the premiere of The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D , Director Richard Rodriguez's fantasy adventure kids' film that was hyped as the movie event of 2005. It fell short of expectations, but Rodriguez clearly retained a deep love for this imaginary world—deep enough that he was keen to revisit it with the forthcoming Netflix standalone sequel, We Can Be Heroes . And yes, the original Lavagirl, Taylor Dooley, makes an appearance.

(Spoilers below for The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagir l.)

Rodriguez is an impressively versatile director, from his early Western/action films El Mariachi (1992), Desperado (1995), and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), to the Spy Kids franchise and last year's science fiction blockbuster, Alita: Battle Angel . After the success of 2003's S py Kids 3D: Game Over , Rodriguez pitched another immersive kids' film, based on a story by his young son, Racer Max. It featured a young boy named Max, neglected by his parents and bullied at school, who creates an imaginary dream world in his journal, called Planet Drool. The inhabitants include Sharkboy (Taylor Lautner), son of a marine biologist, and Lavagirl (Dooley), who has a tendency to set things on fire—as well as "plughounds" and singing bubbles called LaLas. But when the school bully steals Max's dream journal, those dreams start to bleed into reality.

Fans eagerly awaiting the debut of Zack Snyder's Justice League on HBO Max next year were thrilled to hear that a new trailer was coming today to mark the third anniversary of the theatrical cut's release. They're probably feeling a teensy bit cheated right now, since what dropped was actually an updated black-and-white version of the teaser trailer from the virtual DC FanDome event in August—although the eagle-eyed viewer will spot a few seconds of new footage. But at least Snyder also provided a virtual breakdown of said trailer during a livestreaming event on Vero.

The August trailer had been removed from YouTube earlier this month because of contested music rights issues—the trailer was set to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." Now those issues have been resolved , and Snyder marked the occasion with this latest black-and-white offering, Cohen soundtrack intact. (You can watch the full-color version here.)

Apparently, Snyder's ideal vision for Justice League would be a black-and-white IMAX version. "That, to me, is the most fan-centric, most pure, most Justice League experience, because that’s how I lived with the movie for two years, in black-and-white," he told The Film Junkee in a recent interview.

His Dark Materials , the BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman's classic fantasy trilogy, received mixed reviews for its first season, although it still warranted an honorable mention in our 2019 year-end TV roundup. The second season debuts next month. HBO dropped the first S2 trailer in July during the virtual San Diego Comic-Con@Home and a second longer one in August. Now BBC has released yet another trailer that includes a short featurette, with cast interviews and some cool glimpses behind the scenes.

(Spoilers for S1 and the Philip Pullman books below.)

As we've written previously, the three books in Pullman's series are The Golden Compass (published as Northern Lights in the UK), The Subtle Knife , and The Amber Spyglass . They follow the adventures of a 12-year-old girl named Lyra, who lives in a fictional version of Oxford, England, circa the Victorian era. Everyone has a companion daemon in the form of an animal—part of their spirit that resides outside the body—and Lyra's is named Pantalaimon. Lyra uncovers a sinister plot that sends her on a journey to find her father in hopes of foiling said plot. That journey takes her to different dimensions (the fictional world is a multiverse) and ultimately to her own coming of age.

Amazon Prime debuted the first trailer (embedded above) for the upcoming fifth season of The Expanse during the series panel at the New York Comic Con's Metaverse today. And the stakes are high. According to the official premise, "The future of The Belt has begun as Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander) wages Armageddon against the Inners for a lifetime of oppression and injustice."

(Some spoilers for prior seasons below.)

As we previously reported, The Expanse is based on a series of novels by James S.A. Corey (the pen name for writing team Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), exploring interplanetary tensions that are breaking out all over a Solar System long since colonized by humans—mostly between Earthers, Martians, and "Belters." Part mystery, part political thriller , part classic space opera, The Expanse has earned almost nothing but praise from critics and its devoted fans alike, not just for its gripping storytelling, but also its excellent use of accurate physics . The third and fourth seasons earned a rare 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes (seasons one and two earned 76 percent and 96 percent, respectively).